Spectrum by Pawson

From Phaidon´s press release: – John Pawson has dedicated his career to exploring and challenging contemporary architectural practices. Celebrated for his minimalist aesthetic, his work is known for its simplicity in form and primarily white color palette. Yet, his photography tells another story, one of endless color. November 2017, Phaidon released the highly anticipated compendium, Spectrum – an extraordinary visual display of the vibrancy of Pawson’s photographic archive.

Taking the reader on a multi-colored journey across the world, through a carefully curated sequence of 320 images, Spectrum highlights the patterns, details, textures, and spatial arrangements that can inspire his work. For Pawson, the memory of a wall in Kyoto, Japan, captured as a digital file, might serve as the perfect reference for a project in Stockholm or West Hollywood. Taken on a digital camera or an iPhone, each photograph represents either a fragment of narrative from individual projects, far-flung travels or a moment that caught his eye in the course of an ordinary day. Spectrum is a captivating collection of these unique scenes from orange stonework to red fabrics, indigo neon lighting to blue skies, green moss to glowing moonlight.

Reflecting Pawson’s own working methods, the chromatic arrangement and cataloguing of the photographs mirror his interests in how these processes can transform into enriching experiences in their own right. In Spectrum, sequencing the images primarily by color often creates unusual pairings between entirely disparate shots, inspiring the reader to consider the subject matter in a new way.